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Just me, or does the calendar app not fit the paradigm?

M

magicandmystery

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 27, 2007
57
0
Am I missing something? Or does the calendar app have a few UI issues that don't seem to fit the paradigm that makes the iPad the magical device that it is?

I can't be the only one tapping in vain on available times in my calendar to fruitlessly attempt to schedule something... Can I?

I can't be the only one who swipes from right to left in a pointless attempt to watch the calendar pages turn like a book (a la the iBook app), in order to see the next day's events... Can I?

(I may be the only person who, after seeing that not work, attempts to swipe left to right, for the previous day's events. Anyone else? No? K—just me, then)

I want to like the calendar app, but these limitations are killing me. It's as if it's a newborn baby, abandoned in the street—I try to go help it, and it stabs me with a rusted fork. Still, I go to the baby, and still it stabs me with the fork. (stupid baby. stupid calendar).

Dear Apple, please fix the baby—err, calendar. I'm sick of being stabbed with a rusted fork every time I try to (use) help it.
 
Definitely agree about the page turning. After using iBooks a lot I try that all the time with Calendar (which looks similar) and get frustrated.
 
The thing is, almost all of the iPad apps seem unfinished to me, I really think they were rushed out to meet the launch and probably had very small teams working on them. If you can remember, a lot of the initial iPhone apps were similarly flakey and incomplete. So I am hopefully that most of the built-in apps will be significantly upgraded and refined in the next major update. I'd also like to see some "missing" apps appear, such as a calculator, weather, stocks, alarm clock, etc. Yeah, I know you can find apps for some of those (although third-party alarm clocks can't really work correctly), but I'd like a decent standard set anyway.
 
I get the feeling that Apple didn't even let the iPad app team know about the iPad until it was launched. iBooks background is too bright, iCal doesn't swipe, and iTunes app syncing is cluttered and confusing for not separating iPhone and iPad apps. They have a lot of Apple polishing to do in this area.
 
My biggest problem is that there is no way to copy/cut & paste events as far as I can tell. This is so silly because I have really no way of organizing my events without doing a lot of manual work.
 
ovrlrd said:
My biggest problem is that there is no way to copy/cut & paste events as far as I can tell. This is so silly because I have really no way of organizing my events without doing a lot of manual work.
Click to expand...

Agreed! I needed to use logmein to get to my Mac last week to copy past an event a bunch of times :/
 
I was pretty amazed that the pages could not be turned with a swipe.

Maybe 4.0 will see a number of refinements
 
Agree on all of this. The calendar has several new nice features, but they are NOT 'pad'y, if you know what I mean. It really is like they came from the 'next calendar' team and not the touch/swipe/match iBooks etc team. Almost reminds you of how some of Redmond's stuff doesn't match from product to product. :D:D
 
tigres said:
Again it's the locked down system. I copied a photo off a web paged yesterday and can't delete the thing.

With the OP. Love the look of the calendar, but hate using it.
Click to expand...

Did you save it so it is in photos? You can delete it from the photos app. Select the photo then click the arrow in the top left.
 
Agree with everything here, but I will add that when making a new appointment, it defaults to 10:00pm? At least it is on mine until I figure some other setting out.
 
kirchnrd said:
Agree with everything here, but I will add that when making a new appointment, it defaults to 10:00pm? At least it is on mine until I figure some other setting out.
Click to expand...

Sometimes it's 9am, sometimes it's 10pm. On mine, at least. No idea why. And I swear I saw an arbitrary 3pm once.
 
magicandmystery said:
I can't be the only one who swipes from right to left in a pointless attempt to watch the calendar pages turn like a book (a la the iBook app), in order to see the next day's events... Can I?
Click to expand...

Agree, but then again, its NOT a book. I hate the whole copy the book experience paradigm. It's like a vegetarian eating a fake hot dog. You can do much better on both accounts. I've tried to turn the pages, because they look like pages. But WHY did they make a calendar look like a book? Lets advance technology not copy devices from the Gutenberg era.
 
Zazoh said:
Agree, but then again, its NOT a book. I hate the whole copy the book experience paradigm. It's like a vegetarian eating a fake hot dog. You can do much better on both accounts. I've tried to turn the pages, because they look like pages. But WHY did they make a calendar look like a book? Lets advance technology not copy devices from the Gutenberg era.
Click to expand...

Apple set it up like an appointment book, and I think that it works. I initially thought there would be no compelling reason to have a program imitate real-world objects, but I see the reason—if it looks like a book, you immediately know how to use it. Maybe that will change, but as of now...

Let's just say that they didn't set it up like a book (ie., no turning of pages). They should still stay true to their own HIG's, and allow appointments to be made (calendar entries) by tapping the time, as opposed to a "+".

Apps like Bonnier's Popular Science are attempting to re-invent traditional print media in a new way—substantially different from their real world counterparts. Apple could've done the same thing with their calendar app... but they didn't. So flipping a page? It should be there.

Bad apple->bad Apple.
 
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